A fine spring weekend is the perfect time to look forward to what will be undoubtedly a fine summer, so I took the opportunity to build a fire pit, something I have been considering for some time.

Now like every man I enjoy a fire,the problem is you go through wood at an alarming rate. However as someone who works with wood I should have lots of offcuts so it shouldn’t be a problem. The trouble is I have so many ways of using up waste wood, I am running out of waste. For example many years ago I met up with a craftsmen in America who taught me to use up my hardwood offcuts to make Charcoal, so all the good wood gets turned into charcoal which is then used as fuel in my hot food smoker. With a wood burning stove soft woods get used for kindling, and so I am starting to run out.

Therefore if I was going to build something else that burnt wood I needed to find a more efficient way of using the heat. As I see it you burn wood the heat is gone so what I have tried is creating a reservoir in the form of cobblestones loosely packed in a frame around the fire, therefore some heat gets through the gaps and some soaks into the stone which then radiate the heat outwards. Having tried it I now have some refinements that can be made to the design but the concept appears to work, unfortunately all work stopped for several hours as a family we warmed our toes.